Weekend 2: July 23-25 2011

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I am feeling a little odd – apprehensive? Scared? – today as I leave to drive around to the east side of the Sierras, where I will hike back up to Sixty Lakes Basin tomorrow.  I think it is in part because it will be the first time I have camped alone (tonight) and the first time  I will hike 16+ miles alone.  Probably most of it has to do with all the snow on the mountain passes, and snow scares me. 

This past weekend was lots of fun.  This time we are staying in a “dorm,” which is really a woman’s house that has 3 extra bedrooms with two beds in each.  The woman has an extensive dvd collection, and the first day back we spent the entire day vegging out and watching movies.  The woman also stocks her refrigerator for her dorm guests, so we didn’t have to buy any food.  Movies and food – doesn’t get much better than that.  In the dorm was me, the Punster, and the two girls from the girl/girl group.  One of the girls is from Washington and has been a rafting Guide in the past – going down rivers all over Washington and going down the Grand Canyon at least once.  She went to one of the river trip places in Three Rivers and managed to go on a rafting trip this weekend for free in exchange for her helping guide the raft – pretty cool.  The other girl is from California and has a twin sister who also does field work type of stuff.  She is always super energetic and happy to be out hiking, or really doing anything, and is really fun to be around.  She is known for the flannel shirt that she wears, as well as the one piece flannel outfit that she recently bought at Goodwill.  J

The Punster, Flannel, and I went to the Visalia Farmer’s Market again on Saturday and did some random odds and ends around town.  When we got back to the Park, we met up with the Guide and we all went to a swimming hole recommended by my boss to go find western pond turtles.  He had also given us snorkeling gear, and though the water was freezing, we had a lot of fun and found two turtles!  One the way back we stopped briefly at a post office built in the early 1900s.

Yesterday Flannel, the Guide, and I went to do touristy things in Sequoia National Park.  We took a tour of Crystal Cave (very awesome), hiked up to Moro Rock (large rock with some 800 stairs to climb to get to the top), to Bobcat Point (amazing view of the valley below), Crescent Meadow (mountain meadow), Tharp’s Log (where a guy named Tharp built a hope out of a hollowed out fallen sequoia), the Senate (a bunch of giant sequoias all in one place), the President (one big tree), and finally the Giant Sherman Tree (the largest tree in the world by volume).  Along the way we saw at least two bears (we think we saw the same one twice) and a weasel.  One of the bears we saw when a bunch of tourists started acting really excited on the trail – the whole family, who we think were from out of the country – jumped up on a fallen log and excitedly started taking photos.  To my amazement a bear popped out of the ferns about 20 feet ahead and began meandering its way toward us!  Flannel told us, and the tourists, that this was bad – bears should not feel okay with being near people, because then the bear becomes a “problem bear.”  As a result, we needed to haze the bear.  I don’t know if the tourists understood us or not, but they certainly acted as if they hadn’t heard us.  At this point the bear was about 6 feet from the tourists on their log.  Flannel yelled at the bear and the Guide and I threw sticks at it until the bear ran away.  The tourists scowled at us – we had obviously ruined their day by scaring away the bear that had been so close.  Sigh

All in all, we had a great day being tourists. 

As I said before, today I am driving to the east side where I will camp somewhere near Onion Valley and start hiking up Kearsarge Pass.  I will make a brief stop at the Rae Lakes Ranger Station, and, depending on the time, camp there or continue on to Sixty Lakes Basin.  Should be fun!  I also recently bought a new camera battery, so hopefully I can take more photos without fear that they will die mid stint.  Hopefully I will get another post out after this next stint in 11 days!

SEKI Stint 1: 12 July to 21 July 2011 : Returning

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At the end of the first stint three members of our group (the Musician, Punster, and El Freezin) decided to take a different way back to the trailhead, while my boss and I hiked out the same way – kindof.  My boss had never taken the basin way out (follow the basin down until it meets with the trail) and so we took that way, passing all the lakes of the basin and some beautiful waterfalls, and cliffs, along the way.  We did 14 miles the first day, and 8 the second, doing in 1.5 days on the way back what had taken 2.5 to do going up.  Along the way we came across another alligator lizard and a garter snake and were warned of, but never saw, a bear in the campground.  My boss’s family met him at the trailhead, and my coworkers were already at the car, so we split ways from my boss, and my coworkers and I drove back to the SEKI headquarters. 

I am still a little stunned that I have this job for the next 2.5 months.  The scenery is gorgeous, the work is awesome, and the people are lots of fun.  The hikes out of the backcountry to resupply fresh produce (if I so choose) are a little long, but they will only result in making me a stronger hiker, which I look forward to.  I think I am falling in love with the Sierras, which I had not anticipated doing, and look forward to my second stint, which begins next Tuesday. 

SEKI Stint 1: 12 July to 21 July 2011 : The Work

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Our work at Sixty Lakes Basin began with mending the summer gill nets from 2010 from the five lakes SEKI is currently working at restoring.  Dozens of nets, some with very large holes, were mended to the point that our backs ached – but I really don’t think any of us minded, especially when the Musician brought out his mp3 player with speakers!  When all the nets were mended (two days later) we went to the first of our lakes and got trained in how to pull in nets (in this case, the nets that had been in the lakes all winter) and set out the newly mended nets.  This involved getting into really warm clothes (the lakes are very cold!), then into waders, fins,  and a personal floatation device (life vest) and sitting in fly-fisherman’s tube – inflated on three sides with a seat and a strap to keep you from falling out the front side.  The person in the tube would then paddle around the lake and bring in the old nets and put out the new ones, while the people on the bank would pick out the fish stuck in the net and mend the winter nets.  The worst part was picking out the fish – most of which were probably from the early winter, based on their condition.  After the first fish I just had to stop thinking about the nastiness of what I was picking out and just do it. The decayed fishy smell would get on your hands and stay the rest of the day, despite trying to rub the smell off using sand in the water and snow.    

Our boss also taught the Musician and I how to electrofish, which involves sending out a low current of electricity through the water that stuns the fish long enough for the non-electrofisher to nab the fish with a net.  We do this in the streams that run between the lakes with the gill nets, to ensure that no fish escapes!  Electrofishing was also quite fun – I will enjoy doing that quite a bit. 

The last thing we were taught was how to do frog surveys.  One of the reasons the lakes are being restored (ie, the non-native fish are being removed) is because the fish eat the eggs, larvae, and frogs of mountain yellow legged frogs as well as the aquatic invertebrates that the frogs need to eat.  Lakes with fish have no frogs and very few aquatic insects.  In the places where the lakes are being restored the fish are small and starving – you would need a couple dozen to even think of making a meal of them.  One of the biggest outcries from the public about this project is that people are concerned that their fishing lakes will be affected; these people don’t realize that the lakes that are being targeted are ones that no one would ever fish from due to the fish being so small.  

Anyway – frog surveys.  These were fun to learn how to do, in part because we were actually looking for frogs (always a favorite of mine) but also because SEKI’s frog survey techniques were so different from the ones I am used to back home – it is always fun to learn new methods, especially when they relate to frogs.  When we were trained, there was still a considerable amount of snow and ice in and around the lake we were at; probably too cold for frogs to be out.  It will be interesting to see if there are more frogs out when the ice and snow thaws. 

SEKI Stint 1: 12 July to 21 July 2011 : The People

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My coworkers are, simply put, very awesome and fun to be around.  I have no problem working with any of them and would have been fine being paired with any of them – it is quite a tribute to my boss that he hired such awesome people. 

My partner for the month of July is a field tech/Musician from Mammoth who is a crazy-fast hiker and enthusiastic about exploring the Sierras on foot and ski.  He at first struck me as a serious dude, but has a dry sense of humor that comes out with the best comments at times – I think we will get along just fine.  He also knows his aquatic insects and wildflowers really well, which is fun.  He plays the banjo (and mandolin!) and talks music with my boss.  He had the foresight to bring out speakers with his mp3 player, and thus we often got to mend gill nets to music. 

The “boy” of the boy/girl team is a highly talented Punster who can turn almost any sentence to have a different meaning – it is quite humorous and keeps us all on our toes.  He is also an avid hiker (and fast!) and spends part of the year working at Antarctica (Big Red!), which I think is cool (no pun intended).  The Punster has hiked the Appalachian trail and has lots of stories about his time on the trail, in Antarctica, and about growing up – sometimes we don’t know which ones to believe (for instance, he has no music preference and has never owned a CD) – but dinner times at Sixty Lakes were always lively and fun. 

The “girl” of the boy/girl team has been a backcountry ranger for both Denali National Park and Death Valley National Park and has a slew of other professions in between.  She has been a seasonal employee for so long that she now travels from job to job with all her possessions in a small trailer towed behind her car.  These possessions include a dirt-bike and mountain bike, which is pretty cool.  Due to a back-story I will not explain here, her nickname around camp was “El Freezin.”  El Freezin brought a Cosmopolitan magazine and toe nail polish to camp in an attempt to get a rise out of our boss; on the first night she and I sat down and painted our toes while reading Cosmo articles.  Her plan to wig out our boss did not work; he barely looked twice and thought nothing was odd. The Cosmo, in fact, became an almost prized possession in camp, with everyone reading from it throughout the week, especially at dinner time where ridiculous articles and stories would be read out loud and giggled at.  In the magazine was a full page photo of Justin Timberlake (JT!), which we ended up ripping out and posting at Snaggletooth Boomer.  Later on in the week El Freezin put Vicks under her nose to help against the fish smell and then put some dirt on the Vicks, resulting in a pseudo-mustache.   She got me to do the same, and we were finally successful at getting a reaction from our boss, who thought we were ridiculous and funny at the same time.  We pretended we were “dudes” for the next couple of hours, saying “dude” a lot and saying that “we liked sports.”  Doesn’t every guy talk like that?  J 

While it was really nice to have another girl in camp, it was especially awesome that it was El Freezin – she and I ended up talking (and laughing) a lot throughout the week and, I think, becoming close in the way that constant companionship in the backcountry can bring.  One of the major drawbacks of this job is that you make such close connections with the people in the first few weeks, and then only get to see most of these people the rest of the summer through careful planning ahead of time to meet up on the weekends, since there is no phone or internet contact while we are in the back country. 

The boss who came to Sixty Lakes is a guy who is finishing his master’s thesis on turtles while working at SEKI and supporting his wife and young son.  He is an excellent leader – very understanding with me while hiking up, very patient while teaching me and the Musician different knots that are necessary for tying gill nets and screen tents down, and very fun to be around on our off time.  He is very passionate in his love of the job and the Sierras and yet is also very passionate in his love of his family – you can tell how much he loves being in the backcountry and working toward restoring the high elevation lakes and you can also tell that he misses his family quite a bit by being up there.  I can only hope that someday I meet someone who will think and talk about me and my (future) kids in the same way that he does about his wife and son.  While there is much more about my boss than this (including being very funny) these are the things that struck me most about him.

SEKI Stint 1: 12 July to 21 July 2011 : The Camp

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We arrived to Sixty Lakes Basin on the 14^th.  At the site there is a giant bear-proof box called a Greenlee, where all the food is kept, and a place where a mosquito-proof screen tent (brought on the helicopter) is set up.  One of the first jobs of the campsite was to find and dig a “boomer”, or hole in the ground for bathroom duty (so named because of its boomerang shape!).  Our boomer ended up with a large rock on one side, so we dubbed it “Snaggletooth Boomer.” 

When the helicopter came on the 15^th with the rest of our gear and food we got to set up the screen tent.  In this tent we made a table out of rocks for the stove to sit on, another rock table for the water filter, and a large rock table in the middle.  My partner and I had flown out some camping chairs, and the end result was quite homey.  What a difference having your stuff flown out makes instead of having to hike everything out!  In the afternoons we would all gather in the screen tent for dinner and eat and talk and laugh.

Our Greenlee and screen tent are located between some beautiful lakes in the basin; all around the site you can see snow capped mountains and blue lakes.  Most of the lakes still have snow drifts around their edges, and the end result is quite stunning. 

SEKI Stint 1: 12 July to 21 July 2011 : Getting There

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On the 12 of July we arrived at the office in the early morning to get all our equipment ready and packed.  During our first stint two sites were to be mobilized: the Center Basin site (not mine) and the Sixty Lakes Basin site, where I would be working the rest of the summer.  All the gear and food for both sites needed to be brought to the helipad, where it would be flown out to the sites later in the week.  This was complicated by the fact that SEKI was re-oiling its roads, and so taking things to the helipad were delayed by a few hours.  During this stint we were hiking in from the west side of the park instead of the east side because the passes over the Sierras were still too dangerous to cross from all the snow this past year.

We ended up arriving at Cedar Grove in Kings Canyon National Park, (where we would all begin hiking) around 5:00pm and started hiking around 5:30pm.  The Center Basin group (the girl/girl pair and one of my bosses) were joined by camera men from Fish and Wildlife who going to make a film about the mountain yellow legged frog.  My group consisted of five of us: me, my partner, my other boss, and the girl/boy pair.  Despite the late start, we still began hiking since it would be light until at least 8:30 or so. 

Because the helicopter would not bring our supplies and food until the 15^th, we all had to bring in four days worth of food and whatever clothes/warm things we wanted to have.  The hike to Sixty Lakes Basin was ~22 miles and ended up taking 2.5 days of hiking.  The hike was, at times, grueling because of my heavy pack.

 I camped in the backcountry in snow a year ago and had been quite unprepared for the cold – I think this affected my packing decision, as I ended up packing a lot of clothes (socks and undies for each day, one extra shirt and 2 pairs of pants, and a snow jacket).  This, along with my sleeping bag, tent, bear can, food, sleeping bag liner, water, and miscellaneous toiletries made my bag extremely heavy – probably around 45-50 lbs.  I was also fairly out of shape from being stuck in the office, writing my thesis the past semester, so the long hike plus my heavy bag made the trip out agonizing at times. 

 On the plus side (which outweighed the heavy bag) I did get to see a bear, alligator lizard, rattlesnake, and yellow bellied marmot on the way to Sixty Lakes Basin, and the scenery along the way was gorgeous and breathtaking – raging rivers, waterfalls, and towering snow-capped mountains on either side of deep valleys.  Another factor that really helped me finish the long hike was that my boss was really understanding of my heavy bag/out-of-shapeness and encouraged me along the way.